By default Firefox uses Notepad its own viewer when viewing the source of a page (CTRL+U or View, Page Source or selecting View Page Source from the Context Menu). You can select which text editor (such as Notepad++) Firefox uses by default with this simple tweak:
1. In a new tab type about:config in the address bar
2. In the filter field type view_source.editor.external
3. Double-click on the entry to set it to true
4. In the filter field type view_source.editor.path
5. Double-click on the entry and in the pop-up box enter the path for your text editor
6. Click OK and close the tab
Source: CyberNet Forum
Um, Firefox provides its own source viewer and uses it by default. Still an interesting tip. Thanks!
Firefox provides its own source viewer, that is right, but not everyone just wants to view the source sometimes.
This change did exactly what I wanted it to do, got view source routed to my notepad++ thanks alot =]
This fix does not work on my WinTel(DELL Dimension E521) machine.
Is the path like this: “C:\Program Files\EditPlus 3″
or from the firefox directory, like this: “..\Program Files\EditPlus 3″?
Neither path funstions. I remain with the default editor. I even copied the path from the properties section of the EditPlus shortcut. No luck.
Any ideas.
Best regards
Wayne
It looks like the path does not like the space between “Program” and “Files”. I replaced it with %20, and it worked.
Best regards,
Henri
Euh, sorry, I made a mistake. It doesn’t work
Henri
I wanted FF to open my source in a notepad, but when i provide the source to be C:\WINDOWS\system32\notepad.exe, an new notepad window is opened, with a windows popup “The file name, directory name or volume label syntax is incorrect”.
What is it that iam doing wrong? do i provide notepad.exe? or something else??
Please let me know.
Suresh
Personally I prefer this plain and simple old school text editor:
http://home.online.no/~westerma/WestEdit/
Interestingly, this tip works for me using UltraEdit (a popular programmer’s text editor) for most web pages, but not this particular page. LOL!
The problem seems to be in the title of the page which has some odd characters in it (specifically, the apostrophe) that FireFox passes along in the temporary file’s path that it sends the editor. I use UltraEdit as the default editor in IE, and have no problems. Therefore, it appears to be an issue with FireFox, not UltraEdit. It would appear that Firefox has resolved the issue in their source editor rather than creating and passing a file name that other editors will always like while IE doesn’t make this mistake.
If anyone has any pull with the FireFox team, it seems like this would be relatively easy to fix in the next release.
I have found that a plugin called ViewSourceWith fixes this problem and works perfectly. You can get it at
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/versions/394
John
Thanks – I was resorting to opening stuff in IE when I wanted to edit source, so this is really helpful, thanks.